Packing, packing, packing.

Here's a thought for those of you who would like to sally forth into the great unknown in your brand new RV: LEARN HOW TO PACK! That's right, there's only so much room for your stuff in one of these aluminum boxes. You absolutely must pack effectively if you want to bring along everything you'll need on the road.

Our thirty-foot Tioga motor home is what they call a "basement model." That means the manufacturer has jacked the floor level of the coach up off the truck frame far enough to create a vacant space between the frame and the floor. This vacant space is then devoted to storage. Sometimes, it even runs clear through from side to side. Naturally, between the wheel wells is where you get the tallest lockers. Into these you can pack fairly large items, things like my galvanized tub in which I packed all the "wet" items like hoses, filter units, and hose fittings or the plastic tub for all the sewer-related items. In between these large lockers, in places like over wheel wells, you have several low-profile lockers. Into these I would store things like the drive-up blocks, a fiberglass ladder for adjusting the awing, and a set of folding chairs if the provided picnic bench seating looked too grungy. These low-profile lockers tended to extend from the left side to the right side of the coach.

I studied these various lockers for some time before I began to pack things into them. I'm glad I did. From what I saw on the road, many people don't do any planning at all. They simply stand five feet away and throw things into the lockers. When you have a compartment that is, say, fourteen inches high, twenty-four inches deep, and four feet wide, you want to make the most of that space in three dimensions. But when you just chuck items into the space, you end up with a jumble of goods that don't make full use of the height.

To counter this problem, I went to home depot and purchased heavy duty plastic tubs normally used for mixing mortar (photo top left). They measure approximately two by three feet. In my largest locker, I was able to fit two of these, one on top of the other, which largely filled the space, with enough room left over to fit extra oil, camp stove fuel, antifreeze, and a camp lantern standing up. In the bottom tub went the camp stove, the barbecue tools, a bag of charcoal, two 100-foot ropes, and the steel barbecue grill-top that we used when that essential item was absent on the RV park's barbecue fixture, which usually consisted of a large, rusty truck wheel laying flat on the ground.

Into the top tub went every gizmo and widget I could think of that would make my life easier in a pinch. Here you would find a level, a basket of WD40, light-weight oil, lock lubricant, Silcone sealant, etc. Also here was the 110v extension cord, the TV cable, the heavy rubber hammer for testing tire inflation, an axe, jumper cables, picnic tablecloth hold-down clips, plastic table cloth, and lots more.

Between the two tubs I stored the rubber-backed 4'x6' industrial carpet that I would throw down in front of the RV door (where allowed by the park). The carpet sitting on top of the first tub made it easy to slide tub 2 into place on top.

One locker I packed completely full of firewood. That, in retrospect, was a bad idea. Did you know that some states have a law against hauling wood in from other states? Well, I was duly informed of this fact when we were getting our tires changed in Minnesota. The tire jockey told us that it was like a $500.00 fine to do so. Needless to say, the firewood stayed at the tire shop for their next weenie roast.

One thing you need for stabilizing your RV are wooden blocks. These blocks go on the ground under the rear scissor jacks so the jacks don't have to extend as far. Mind you, more modern coaches often have built-in jacks and you don't bother with the wood. But if you do need these little gems, I found a great way to keep them organized. Since I wanted to keep my blocks in the rear compartment with the drive-up blocks, a compartment only about two feet wide and six inches high, I devised a drawer to put them in (photo right). The drawer is about 13" wide and six feet long and has a set of single-direction wheels mounted on the rear of the box and a handle on the front. Just pushing the blocks into the open locker would make it difficult to retrieve them when they had been pushed out of your reach. But with the blocks in the drawer I merely have to grab the handle, lift slightly over the lip of the locker, and pull it completely out until the wheels in back catch on the lip. I then set the handled end on the ground. Nothing could be easier. In the drawer, along with the blocks, I keep an army shovel, a kneeling pad in case the ground is wet or rocky when I get down to lower the scissor jacks, and the combination socket and handle that you use to lower the jacks. When I'm done with the drawer, I simply pick it up and roll it back into place in the locker. Very neat and tidy. And by the way, the army shovel came in very handy in Minnesota when I had to dig a hole for the tire jockey to remount the tire after the old one had blown out beside the freeway. Not sure what I would have done without that shovel.

So, that's all for now on the subject of exterior storage. The big thing to remember is to not only use all your width and depth in any given locker, but the height of the locker as well.